


Colors

by milkystrawberry



Category: Hatoful Kareshi | Hatoful Boyfriend
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-21 12:28:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21074909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/milkystrawberry/pseuds/milkystrawberry
Summary: The world wasn't always so grey.





	Colors

You were only four when the terrorist attack happened. You remembered being surrounded by the color red mixed in with smoke and debris after being thrown back by the initial explosion. It was all a haze of terrible booming and screams, yet you couldn’t hear a thing. Your ears were ringing, your heart was pounding and your entire body felt like it was on fire. Then it was black.

You weren’t expecting to wake up three days later in a hospital. When you opened your eyes, you saw a grey room with grey furniture with grey people moving in and out of the room when they saw you were awake. You had tubes crawling along your body like snakes that were attached to machines you’ve never seen before.

You were numb from the inside out, probably drugged out of your mind to avoid feeling the pain you were supposed to be in. You almost wished that weren’t the case, even at that age. It would’ve been the first thing you’ve felt in a long time.

—

You learnt much later that your parents had died in the accident. It didn’t affect you one bit besides granting you a tiny bit of happiness for only a moment. All they did was ignore you. They never acted like your parents anyway and were closer to strangers more than anything, so why should you care?

The doctor also had to explain that you lost most sensorimotor functions in your right side, and the only thing you could think about was how foreign that term sounded. He said you also lost your ability to see any color besides red, which explained why everything besides your bandages had been grey.

None of this made a difference. Your world never had color in the first place.

—

You didn’t always hate your parents, and there was a time in your life where you thought they didn’t hate you. All you wanted was their attention, so you tried everything you could.

The house you lived in was massive, especially at your small size, which made the outside seem like a whole other world that you could get lost in by just walking around.

When you stumbled upon pill bugs for the first time, they caught your interest and reeled you in like a fish. You once spent the whole afternoon in the garden just trying to find more of them, only going back inside once it was getting dark. You didn’t think twice about how nobody called you in.

Before you could slip away into the depths of sleep, you wondered if your parents would be interested in learning about the kinds of bugs that lived alongside them in their own home and garden. The next few weeks were all about finding and documenting them, and you made sure to give pill bugs their own little spotlight as your favorite.

When you showed it to them, all you got was a pat on the head.

—

You tossed away who you used to be and created a clean slate three years later. You were no longer Utsuro Ichijou, but Souma Isa, a newly recruited Hawk Party researcher.

Though, you wondered if Utsuro Ichijou ever existed to begin with.

—

You were surrounded by idiots.

One of your colleagues was a flamboyant boy who cared too much about his appearance, and the other one was an eccentric man who conducted questionable experiments.

There was never a dull moment in the lab. One second you were unknowingly involved in a heated argument with the feminine boy — Tohri — and he was squabbling with you over something trivial, and the next you were being dragged off by the odd man — Ryuuji — to go dabble in more of those suspicious experiments.

The weirdest one you witnessed was eewoowoo, where subjects developed a mouth on the back of their heads. It was fascinating but Tohri definitely did not approve. You wondered if these experiments were approved of in general.

The years passed by, and there was not one single day where the same thing happened twice.

—

Sometimes you would find a jacket hanging over your shoulders when you woke up at your desk. You recognized those odd stains, having been the one to pester Ryuuji to clean them off or get changed, but he always brushed off your concerns. “Stains were inevitable working here!” he would say, even though you had extra coats in storage.

You didn’t understand Ryuuji Kawara. He was a genius in the whole sense of the word, making everything look so effortless, especially when he always looked like he just rolled out of bed. You looked up to him, wishing to someday surpass him.

Even if he was a genius, that was no excuse to go without bathing.

—

Ryuuji talked to you about a lot of things. You slowly accumulated the knowledge of his multiple expeditions and findings with the research that came after. He spoke about the world and what he thought of it, too. It certainly was an interesting take.

You would soon come to know that he had a family back home — a wife and son. Once, you asked him why he doesn’t just go home to visit them after he was offering to take you somewhere again. He was quick to brush the question off like it was a trivial matter, quickly going back to his work and changing the subject.

You knew you would never understand Ryuuji Kawara as a whole.

—

You didn’t ask or need to be looked out for, but he seemed insistent on doing just that. He made sure you ate and got enough sleep, always leaving snacks by your desk whenever you fell asleep researching again. He was patient with you, but not because he pitied you.

It didn’t bother you, but it did confuse you. You weren’t his son.

—

The lab was quiet without him around. You started anticipating stories from his trip whenever he came back from one, which usually started by his explanation on why he chose certain souvenirs for you. Ryuuji always bought you one, and your drawer was starting to become cluttered.

His way of speaking captivated you, especially whenever he would start rambling about what he was researching on his time away. You would listen more than you commented, but when you did, he lit up every time.

You decided one day to take him up on that offer to see the world with him when you got older. If it was as colorful as he made it sound like, you might’ve admitted you were looking forward to it.

—

The day after your parents disregarded your little project, you ran away to the beach. You always came here when you needed the air since you lived nearby. Nobody ever seemed to bat an eye at your disappearances.

The sand crunched underneath your feet and every breath was like inhaling mouthfuls of saltwater. It was getting late and the sun was setting, casting an array of colors along the horizon that were enough to ease your soul for just a moment.

In the distance there was a lighthouse that you could barely make out. There was a boat on the water, and if you tried hard enough you could make out voices. They sounded like they were having fun sailing along calm waves.

You sat on the shore and hugged your knees to your chest. You knew from day one that your existence didn’t matter but kept trying to deny it, hoping there was still a drop of love for you in your parents’ hearts. If you didn’t work so hard on your project, you would’ve tossed it in the trash, but you kept it for years on end. You still didn’t know why.

Slowly, your vision became blurry as tears stung your eyes, and it was the first memory you had of crying. You cried until there was nothing left in you.

When you looked up, the boat was gone. After that day, you never cried again.

—

He was going on a trip soon. He asked if you wanted a souvenir, and you said you didn’t.

You researched at your desk like usual, patiently waiting for his stories to come.

—

You kept waiting.

They never came.

—

The man laying on that bed wasn’t Ryuuji. You stood beside him, looking down at a sickly, paper-thin corpse that you couldn’t believe used to be human.

He was the only person worthy of your respect and admiration and you realized too late that you loved him. He had died of a disease — a _disease._

Those weren’t his eyes staring back at you. That wasn’t his voice telling you to come closer. That was not Ryuuji Kawara.

His last words to you were a question; he asked that if you were to ever stumble upon his son, you would grant his wish, something he was never able to do. With one final glance, he offered you a weak smile. That was the last time you saw his colors.

When you left that room, you were no different than that corpse, holding onto nothing but a promise etched into your heart.

Just like that, your world became grey again.

**Author's Note:**

> sobs
> 
> anyway, i wanna thank my friend kirogaraii for her sad ass utsuro headcanons that i used here, follow her and read her ao3 stuff please u__u
> 
> also thank u if u read all the way! i hope u enjoyed it :) my twitter is @quinoajuice if u wanna be sad with me. also stan akatsuki


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